This exploration of the effects of lynching in the U.S. speaks powerfully to us in these times that have witnessed the creation of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious.
On the Courthouse Lawn investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities, who either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is and issues a clarion call for American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy today.
Inspired by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas to help communities heal, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in local communities, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation efforts must also be locally based in order to bring both black and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue.
A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.
This exploration of the effects of lynching in the U.S. speaks powerfully to us in these times that have witnessed the creation of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious.
On the Courthouse Lawn investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities, who either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is and issues a clarion call for American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy today.
Inspired by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas to help communities heal, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in local communities, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation efforts must also be locally based in order to bring both black and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue.
A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.
Foreword
Introduction
PART 1: A SEASON OF MADNESS: TWENTIETH-CENTURY LYNCHING ON THE
EASTERN SHORT
CHAPTER 1
A Conversation on Race: Lynching and the Courthouse Lawn
CHAPTER 2
Mob Rule on the Shore, 1931–1933
CHAPTER 3
A Conspiracy of Silence: Ordinary People and Complicity in
Lynching
CHAPTER 4
“The Law in All Its Majesty”
CHAPTER 5
“Serving the Peninsula”: Local Newspapers and Lynching
PART 2: TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION FOR LYNCHING IN THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
CHAPTER 6
Reconciliation and Lynching in International Context
CHAPTER 7
Breaking the Silence: “Words Are the Most Powerful Tools of
All”
CHAPTER 8
Confronting the Role of Institutions in Racial/Ethnic Violence
CHAPTER 9
Reconciliation in the Twenty-First Century
Afterword to the Tenth-Anniversary Edition
Petition to the Governor of Maryland Regarding the George Armwood
Lynching at Princess Anne, MD, October 18, 1933
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. She is also a civil rights lawyer and a regular speaker on race, public policy, and law. She lives in Baltimore.
“As has been powerfully detailed in Sherrilyn A. Ifill’s
extraordinary work on lynching, there is an urgent need to
challenge the absence of recognition in the public space on the
subject of lynching.”—Equal Justice Initiative
“Sherrilyn Ifill’s seminal work exposing the brutality of the
abhorrent, barbaric practice of lynching is as important today as
it was ten years ago when it was first published—perhaps more so.
Ms. Ifill persuasively argues that this country should confront its
sordid history of lynching through a truth and reconciliation
process. Inspired by her work, many have begun that process. On the
Courthouse Lawn should be read, and re-read, by anyone interested
in racial justice and healing in this country.”—Angela J. Davis,
author of Arbitrary Justice
“This pathbreaking book by Sherrilyn Ifill shows how the ugliest
messages from our racial history and politics can hide openly in
the public square. Her unflinching memory restores hope for the
common good.”—Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
Parting the Waters
"Ifill offers a new approach to addressing the history of lynching
in America. . . One legacy [of racial violence] is the difficulty
blacks and whites have even of discussing it, since few really want
to remember what, for most on both sides of the divide, were
traumatizing events. Yet remembering is essential. An intriguing,
immodest proposal that itself warrants discussion—and action.
—Kirkus Review, starred review
"A sobering and eye-opening book on one of America's darkest
secrets. A must read for anyone willing to examine our history
carefully and learn from it." —Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.,
executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for
Race and Justice
"A thoroughly researched, unflinching account of the ugly history
of the Eastern Shore's early-twentieth-century lynchings."—Petula
Caesar, Baltimore City Paper
"Elegantly written and persuasively argued . . . Ifill explores the
possibilities and offers concrete advice on how truth and
reconciliation could be widely employed in the United States."—Mary
Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social
Thought and professor of history, University of Pennsylvania
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